


the trick of it is (don’t be afraid anymore)

by seventymilestobabylon



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 10:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17098826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventymilestobabylon/pseuds/seventymilestobabylon
Summary: Thomas and Miranda bring James to the country estate for Christmas.





	the trick of it is (don’t be afraid anymore)

**Author's Note:**

> I admit up front that the timelines here make no sense. James meets Thomas in early 1705, and Tragedy Befalls Them by the end of that year, so there isn’t really a Christmas they could have spent together. However, ignoring actual timelines, this would take place in between when Thomas kisses James for the first time and when James goes off to Nassau to get the lay of the land.
> 
> This is a gift fic for a dear friend.
> 
> PS please scream at me in the comments about the McGraw-Hamiltons, because I have every single feeling about them, forever.

James awakes to a message from Admiral Hennessey, a curt summons that turned into a curt giving of orders to spend the following two weeks, including Christmas, with Lord and Lady Wallingford.

“Sir?” James says.

“Lord Wallingford has asked for you,” says Admiral Hennessey. His eyes search James’s face—for some sign of guilt, James supposes. Hennessey had always been afraid that James would fall too much under Thomas’s influence.

“What the devil for?”

Hennessey relaxes. “He says that he doesn’t want a cessation in the good work you’ve been doing together. He calls you invaluable.”

“Invaluable,” repeats James, smirking. It comes easily to him to answer the way Hennessey wants him to. Hennessey grins back, unwillingly.

“Nothing more dangerous than the idle son of an earl,” James adds. Hennessey’s people are gentry. No less capricious than the nobility, in James’s opinion, but Hennessey doesn’t need to know that.

“Might have gone into Parliament and saved us all the devil’s own trouble.” Hennessey reaches for his hat, and James hands it to him. “He’s asked for you to call upon him and his wife—” He pauses, waiting for a reaction.

James keeps his face clear of anything he might be thinking.

“Hm,” says Hennessey. “This afternoon. I suppose he’ll want to give you money for the coach, but for God’s sake don’t take anything from him you don’t have to.”

“No, sir,” agrees James. He does not think there is any possibility of Thomas giving him money for a stage-coach.

* * *

The Hamiltons are remarkably—annoyingly—unbothered. “Do you not want the time with us?” asks Miranda.

“I do,” says James, “of course, but—”

“How it would look?” she suggests innocently.

James shoots her a very unloving look.

“You’re too thin,” she says. “Thomas wants to fatten you up.”

When James glances at Thomas to confirm this, Thomas’s cheeks have pinked. “My father won’t be there. He’s gone to Bath until February, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It isn’t.”

“For his gout,” says Thomas.

“That wasn’t what I—”

Miranda takes a dainty bite of her scone, leaving a fleck of jam on her upper lip. “Oh, James, really. If Bath’s powers of healing are enough to cure the Queen of her gout, surely a mere earl can depend on the same.”

“I don’t care about your father’s gout!” James snaps.

Thomas and Miranda look up with identical expressions of amusement. They are so—he doesn’t know what they are, that unsettles him. Around them, he never feels that his feet are solid beneath him.

“I’m sorry,” says Thomas. “I shouldn’t have teased you. You needn’t come, of course, if you had rather not.”

“You didn’t ask me,” James says.

Miranda raises her eyebrows very slightly and looks down at her lap, by which James understands that she has already made this point to Thomas. Neither of the Hamiltons is quite legible to James, but he understands Miranda a little better, the life she lived before Thomas.

“If I had asked you,” says Thomas, impatient, “you would only have had to go to Admiral Hennessey for permission in any case. The Navy treats you all like children.”

The Navy had not made James’s plans for him, and gone above his head to enforce them. “I’m not fucking the Navy.”

Thomas’s mouth tightens, and Miranda says, with an edge in her voice, “And we are not on one of the Navy’s ships, Lieutenant.”

“I beg your pardon,” James says, to her. She doesn’t like that; she wanted the apology for Thomas, not herself. But James is not Thomas’s plaything, whatever Miranda has resigned herself to, whatever—fucking semblance of control she lets herself pretend that she has over her own life.

“I thought you would be pleased,” says Thomas. “To—I thought we would all like to spend a few weeks together. I so rarely see you both together. I thought you would—” He catches the repetition, casts about for something to replace it with, then gives up. “—be pleased,” he says.

“I _am_ pleased.”

Miranda is making a face that suggests she has washed her hands of them both, but she snorts at this.

“I can be pleased,” James says, badly wrong-footed, which he always always bloody always is with them, “and still be— You haven’t any right to decide for me.”

Thomas looks at Miranda. “What possible difference— You needn’t come if you don’t wish to, but you’ve said that you do wish to. You’d have needed Admiral Hennessey’s permission, and some reason for spending the time with me that isn’t— _carnal,_ and I’ve furnished you with both. I’m sorry I didn’t speak with you about it before, but I hadn’t had the opportunity, and I wanted to give Hennessey enough time to think it over before—”

“All right,” says James. He wants to laugh at Thomas for saying _carnal,_ but he’s still angry, in a way that seemed reasonable when he walked in and now seems childish. “All right. I’ll come. When do you want me there? I’ll need to arrange for a stagecoach.”

Thomas opens his mouth, and shuts it.

“Don’t be absurd,” says Miranda. “You’ll come down with us. We hoped to leave in two days’ time. You’ll have to do without a valet, I’m afraid, as Thomas is planning to let most of the staff go home to their families. Do you think you can manage?”

He knows that she’s offering him a path back into good humour, by making a joke of his circumstances, but he is not in the mood to find it funny. When he finishes his cup of tea, he takes his leave of them and goes back to his own home, where he cannot afford a fire but which belongs to him.

* * *

The Ashbourne home in Dorset is not as bad as James has been imagining. Size apart, there are bits of it that feel cozy, with its plain wood paneling and elderly, creaking chairs. It is extravagant, but does not demand that one be dazzled by it.

If he is dazzled by anything, it’s the warmth of the place. They are on a skeleton staff—“skeleton” is Miranda’s word—but there are fires lit in every room Thomas recommends to James’s use, and a hot water bottle in his bed every night. He wants to thank Miranda and Thomas for this, but he can’t find the words to say it without also saying, or implying, _I was cold all my life before you._

What are the elements that their looks contain, Thomas and Miranda, when they stumble onto a lack in James’s world? Too fond for pity; too kind for condescension. Miranda, at least, grew up knowing fear for money, but neither of them knows what it is to feel real hunger, the kind that wracks a man—a child—and makes him slow at his work, so that he gets cuffed around the neck and head, which dizzies him still more. He does not want them to know it. Not for themselves, and not about him.

But he is losing the knack of keeping a part of himself walled off and safe, only offering the things he wants to be known. They make him forget to take care. Miranda’s knowing eyes. The quirk of Thomas’s mouth. James is shot through with want, possessed by it.

“You needn’t sleep alone,” Miranda says, the second night they are there.

“I am accustomed to it,” James tells her, repressively. She looks as though she wants to say more, but Thomas comes back from his walk, and she holds her peace.

Their days are so idle that James is appalled. They sleep late, and eat when they have a fancy to it, so that James is awake hours before they are, and fills his time bringing books from the library to his bedroom.

“Wake me when you wake up,” Thomas suggests. “We’ll walk together, or read.”

“No.”

Thomas nods. “I—All right.”

He has no right to be injured by that, James thinks, avoiding Miranda’s eye. They are meant to be working. That’s why James is here, to work. So many questions remain about their plans for the Bahamas, but Thomas sleeps until nine and licks cream off his fingers at breakfast and changes the subject back to Shakespeare or the Queen’s health or the Christmas celebrations they are planning in the village.

“At your expense, I suppose,” James says.

Thomas blinks. “We send Christmas boxes to the servants, yes.”

“And your tradesmen.”

“Yes.”

“That is very benevolent of you,” James says.

Miranda says, sharply, “If you’ve a point to make, I wish you would make it.”

“I haven’t,” says James. “Only that you, and others, are fortunate to have such a generous benefactor.”

Color comes into Miranda’s cheeks, and Thomas glances at her, swiftly, then back at James. “I am hardly Miranda’s benefactor, as the worldly goods of a husband also belong to his wife. As for my—the people of the village, it is customary for—”

“As for _your_ people,” James says, very softly. He does not know why he has begun this quarrel. He feels smothered in this house, all soft beds and blazing fires and fucking cream on everything he puts in his mouth. It was not his idea to come.

“Not my people,” says Thomas. “I was going to say _my tenants,_ except that I remembered not all of those who receive money from me at Christmas are my tenants.”

“No?”

Thomas knows that he is being baited. James can see that he knows; but he keeps going, because—James doesn’t know why he keeps going. Nothing Thomas does makes any fucking sense. “No. “Some are—as you said, servants, or tradesmen, or—anyone with whom we do business throughout the year.”

“Ah.” James sets down his fork. “That last, I suppose, is the category that includes me.”

Something in Thomas’s face changes. James does not know how he would describe the alteration, to someone who had not seen it. He is only conscious of a sense of collapse, a crumbling of something that has always held steady when Thomas looks at him. He feels—desolation, and triumph.

“You know that it isn’t,” says Thomas quietly.

A very unpleasant silence follows, broken only by the clink of their silver against plates. James meant to compliment the roast duck. It has been a long while since he tasted duck cooked so well. By the time he opens his mouth to say so, Thomas has set his napkin down and is getting to his feet.

“I have a headache,” he says. “If you will forgive me, I think I will have a bath drawn.”

The floor creaks under his feet, as he departs, and it sounds as loud as cannon fire in James’s ears. He feels a little sick.

Miranda waits a few seconds after the door shuts behind Thomas and then says, “Someone ought to slap your face.”

“I understand that is how the nobility manage when an inferior fails to know his place,” James says nastily.

“No, that won’t do. You forget that Thomas married beneath him. Don’t—” She raises a hand, to stop him interrupting. “I don’t want to hear it. I am not Thomas, and I don’t give a damn about your—whatever this is, whatever way you think you’ve been insulted by Thomas’s notice. The only reason you feel you’ve won this quarrel is that you were the only one engaging in it.”

Yes, he knows.

Perhaps Miranda sees the answer in his face, because she softens a little. “I did the same thing, you know.”

“Did you?” says James. He makes his tone skeptical, wry.

“When we first married.” Miranda puts out a hand and touches the edge of a serving dish, brings a fingerful of gravy back to her mouth and licks it. “I was sure that he would hurt me. My father—” She touches her cheek with the backs of her fingers. “My father had cast me off, and I hadn’t any choice, really, than to marry Thomas. It was that or—”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. James knows how it ends, for women alone.

“I wanted to know the worst of him, straight away, rather than find it out later.” She looks up, thoughtful. “I was—not kind, then. To him. No matter how clearly I could see that he deserved my kindness.”

“If he doesn’t like to hear me speak truthfully about how the world works, I can’t imagine what made him— Why he—” He finds his voice unsteady.

“He is very good at seeing people as people. He asked me to marry him, I didn’t—” Miranda wets her lips, and James realizes that her eyes are bright. She catches him realizing it and looks away.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He pushes back from the table and goes down to his knees beside her chair, so that she can look down at him. But she doesn’t. She rests her elbow on the table, her hand propped over her mouth and cheek, and stares at her plate. “Miranda.”

She gives him a half smile, underneath her hand. “It’s hard to remember—not between me and Thomas, because of course he— But it’s hard to catch sight of us through the eyes of the world, and remember that what they see isn’t what is. Do you understand?”

He does, all too fucking well.

“I had not looked for it from you,” she says, a little fragile.

“I’m sorry,” says James again. He feels like a brute. He meant to hurt Thomas, not her. He meant to hurt neither of them, only to show that he still belonged to himself. He did not think of them—Lord and Lady Wallingford—as beings who could be hurt by him. He takes the hand that is curled in her lap and presses it between both of his. “Truly. I beg your pardon.”

She is so lovely. Her long, slim fingers, the eloquence of her eyes. They regard each other for a long moment. Finally, Miranda bends down and kisses his forehead. “It’s all right.”

Sometimes at night, Thomas sits on the floor beside Miranda’s chair, and she strokes those long fingers against the nape of his neck, the base of his hairline. They settle into each other so easily in those moments that James feels sick with envy.

He gets to his feet, keeping Miranda’s hand between his, and bends to kiss her knuckles. “I should find Thomas,” he says.

“Yes,” she agrees.

He doesn’t do it. He goes to the room that Miranda and Thomas share at night and raises a hand to knock, then doesn’t. He tells himself that he means to look for Thomas first in the study, but when he gets to the study and finds it empty, he just sits down at the desk. He reads a little Cervantes, a little Grotius. He writes until his hand cramps, paragraphs about the pirates of Nassau and the likelihood of the Navy’s success against them, paragraphs that do not need to be written because they are already understood by all parties.

When the light has gone from the windows, and his work is lit only by candles and the roaring fire, Thomas raps his knuckles against the doorframe.

James looks up. “You needn’t knock to come into your own study.”

“Mm,” says Thomas. He crosses to the opposite side of the study and brings two glasses and a bottle of whiskey over to where James is working. “It has been represented to me that I am, at times, overly high-handed.”

“I was a shit.” James stretches out a hand to accept the glass Thomas offers. The whiskey is good, strong.

Thomas regards James from under his lashes. His look is very—it is—James shivers a little, at the look Thomas is giving him.

“Ask me before you ask Hennessey,” James says.

“I—” Thomas is visibly frustrated. “This, again? What could it possibly matter? Are you sorry you’ve come?”

James bites back something ugly. He has put enough ugliness between them for one day. “It matters to me,” he says, carefully. “The Navy has put me at your service, but—”

“You know that isn’t how I think of you.”

“Then don’t—” James sighs. “It isn’t enough, what you think of me. I’m what the world sees, too, and what I see when I—what I see of myself.” Thomas leans forward across the desk, and James leans a little back. “Ask me. Thomas. Before you ask Hennessey.”

“All right,” says Thomas, softly.

James fits his hand against Thomas’s face, and kisses him. He rubs his fingers into the hint of stubble on Thomas’s face—away from his usual valet, he has not been getting as close a shave. James shifts a little to get his mouth on that stubble, pressing careful, soft kisses into the lines of Thomas’s jaw. When he pulls back, Thomas’s eyes are wide, and very serious.

“I love you,” James says.

James has always been the one of them who finds it harder to say. Love comes simply to Thomas. But when James says _I love you,_ Thomas’s face softens into a joy complicated by—shyness, perhaps? Abashment, as if James’s affection for him is a too-rich gift that he does not quite feel he has earned. That small evidence of uncertainty is the thing James cannot resist.

“And,” James says, “and—I’m sorry. The things I—rather, the way I spoke to you, at dinner.”

Thomas is being careful, too. “I hope that it’s—understood between us, that you can speak to me however you wish. Regardless of—rank, or—”

“I mean that I—” James closes his hands into fists, to stop them shaking. Thomas is damned hard to manage, at times, always. “I meant to be unkind, and I am sorry for it.”

A tiny smile tugs at the edges of Thomas’s mouth. “I forgive you,” he says, poking a very little fun at the ritual.

“Good,” James says. He takes another drink of his whiskey. Thomas recalls himself, pours the second glass, and raises it to James’s. “Your health,” he says.

They drink together, companionably. James nudges at the bottle for a second glass. While Thomas pours, he says with effortful casualness, “There’s a passage that connects this room and our bedroom. If you—” He sees James’s face, and turns crimson. “Not for—Miranda and I aren’t— We. Er.”

James laughs, and Thomas laughs too, though his color has not yet subsided. “I mean that our bed is enormous, and we—would welcome you in it. Devil take it, not in the— It is pleasant in the winter, to—”

“Yes,” says James. “I understand what you mean.”


End file.
